Smart Hiring Strategies That Will Greatly Benefit Your Workplace

Hiring and recruiting are arguably one of the most important jobs of the HR department. Yet, in many organizations, these tasks are given very little thought and attention. The result of such HR policies is usually a high turnover rate and a constant drain of quality employees. 

If there’s one thing that can bleed an organization dry both in terms of resources and manpower, it’s a high employee turnover. We’ve put together this guide to discuss what causes this issue and to give you a few strategies that will help you run an efficient recruiting campaign for your HR team. 

High Turnover Rate — The Silent Killer of Growth 

Employees are every company’s most valuable asset. The people that make the entire vertical structure of an organization will always have a massive impact on how said organization fares on the open market. This includes everyone and anyone from maintenance staff to the CEO. 

Your average company, including Fortune 500 big honchos, is operating in a highly competitive environment. Whether you’re going against that other car shop down the street, or your big tech company is challenging another Silicone Valley giant, it’s all the same. Both have to stay on top of their game in order to beat the competition. 

Of all the assets and resources a company has to attain in order to maintain this competitive edge, employees are by far the most difficult ones to get right. You can always get a line of credit from your bank and purchase the latest manufacturing line, or more computing power for your org, but you can’t go out and purchase a perfect employee. Those you have to recruit. 

A high turnover rate is not a good sign. Employees come and go, that’s a given, but if you can’t retain quality people for more than a few months, something isn’t right. 

The Massive Cost of “I Quit” 

While some employee turnover is perfectly normal, the moment a company starts cycling through its workforce is the moment it starts hemorrhaging money. From an organizational point of view, an employee leaving opens up a spot that is then filled by another individual. However, once you look at the bigger picture, you’ll see that every employee is a mid to long-term investment for a company. 

Recruiting, personnel selection, and onboarding are all tasks that cost both time and money. Yet, these costs are nothing compared to the cost of training a new employee and having them become a productive piece of a much larger puzzle. 

Going through all of these steps only to have your employee quit after 3 months on the job can inflict a massive financial hit on the organization as there is no ROI on that particular employee. Furthermore, you are left with a position that is open, thus putting strain on adjacent positions. Not to mention the fact that you have to go through the entire recruiting, onboarding, and training process again. 

Sooner rather than later, all of these costs will accumulate and affect the organization’s bottom line. The job of an HR team is to prevent that from happening. Employee retention is achieved through a number of methods and strategies. 

Be The Organization Quality Employees Want To Work For

This is one of the hardest pills to swallow for most HR teams and organizations in general — in order to attract quality employees, you have to be the kind of company such employees would want to work for. 

It’s that simple. 

If your company has a bad reputation and is generally known for either mistreating or underpaying its employees, no professional worth their salt will want to work there. Therefore, the number one way of boosting your recruiting game and tapping into the pool of highly qualified professionals is to become a place that such employees would be attracted to. 

Do whatever you have to do, including investing in HR, reworking core business policies, and more. Sometimes the lack of interest on the side of qualified professionals isn’t a matter of HR at all. It could be a matter of your organization falling behind the cutting edge of whatever your industry is working on at the moment. 

Perform Proper Background Checks 

Trust but verify is a very simple concept that can save you a tonne of trouble. Every employee that passes the initial interview should be subjected to a background check. The good news is that there are third-party background check services you can use for this How deep and thorough that check should be will depend on the sensitivity of the position they are applying for. In some cases, a remote I-9 and the rest of the basic checks will be more than fine. However, sometimes you need to check those references and look for any potential issues. 

The lack of a spotless record isn’t necessarily grounds for a complete dismissal of said employee. However, it is much better to be fully familiar with someone’s history in your industry and anything else that could be related to your line of work. 

Hire From the Inside 

Referrals work, especially if they’re coming from within your organization. A good way to quickly fill open positions with quality personnel is to talk to people from the relevant department and ask them if they know anyone who could fill the newly opened position. 

This approach forks for a number of reasons, one of them being the fact that your current employees will gladly recommend someone they feel comfortable working with. In other words, they see that person as peer or near-peer in terms of their skill, experience, and knowledge. 

Of course, this is just the first step of many when it comes to this recruiting strategy. Networking is an important part of doing business, no matter the industry. If you have a network of people, other HR specialists, and heads of departments, start making phone calls. There’s a good chance your peers may have a few quality candidates up their sleeve that they had to skip for one reason or another. 

Be Precise With Your Job Descriptions 

If the previous method yields no good leads, you’ll have to reach out to potential employees the old-fashioned way — job ads. 

The tone and contents of a job posting can make or break your recruiting campaign as a whole. Many newbie HR teams make mistakes in this step, that affect their entire recruiting campaign, rendering it fairly ineffective before the first batch of CVs hits the company’s inbox. 

There are several things to look out for: 

• Accuracy of information – First thing first, be accurate with your job ads. It’s important that you let your prospective employee what the job is, what their obligations will be and what is expected from them as they perform the tasks within your organization. Use clear and concise language. Many organizations make the mistake of trying to come across as cool and hip through their ads. This is especially common for tech companies. 
• Realistic expectations – Being realistic with your expectations means that you should look for personnel that is qualified for the position you’re recruiting for. Being realistic means finding a person that is as qualified as you need them to be, no more and no less. Companies that look for 10 years of experience, a whole array of certs and niche qualifications for near-entry level positions are only degrading their company’s reputation. 
• Be respectful – The tone of the job posting should show respect to potential employees. Treating prospective employees with respect shows them that you’re a serious organization and one that understands the symbiotic relationship between companies and people who work for them. 

Incentives 

One way to boost interest in your company is to offer incentives. That being said, you need to be careful when offering incentives otherwise your company could come across as desperate. 

For instance, offering incentives to handpicked candidates, such as high-level experts and top management candidates, is perfectly normal and even expected. Offering a whole array of perks and incentives to low-level employees could work, but only if you have the capacity to handle the higher influx of applications. 

Incentives and perks will greatly boost interest in your company, but that doesn’t mean only quality personnel will apply. Make sure that your HR team is up to the task of sorting through all kinds of candidates before you start offering free gym memberships on top of salaries. 

Track Your KPIs 

It’s a common misconception that the results of the HR department can’t be quantified. There are key performance indicators, or KPIs that will tell you exactly how effective your recruitment strategy is, or was. Metrics such as the turnover rate, absenteeism rate, and many more are fairly accurate at showing you the most prevalent employee trends in your organization. 

That being said, the only way to have this statistical data is to keep track of each and every one of these metrics. Small HR teams usually forego such statistical data gathering for the simple reason of being too small. However, if your organization is of medium size or larger, you absolutely need to keep track of these stats. 

Why? Because not only will you have a clear performance indicator, but you’ll also gather clues that will tell you if your strategy has a problem that you’re not seeing at the moment. For example, a low number of interested qualified candidates is a concerning indicator. It means that there is a reason many of your target candidates are avoiding your company. You need to find that reason and deal with it as soon as possible. 

Similarly, the offer acceptance rate can tell you if you’ve found the perfect sweet spot as far as pay and perks go. 

Use Headhunters for Critical Positions

Sometimes you have to be surgical with your recruiting strategies. This is especially true if you’re looking for top-level management people or highly specialized professionals who are unique to your niche. In such cases, it’s perfectly acceptable to hire headhunters to find the caliber of candidates you’re looking for. 

For one, a headhunter will make your job a lot easier in terms of vetting potential candidates. More importantly, they often have what it takes to not only locate potential candidates but also approach them and potentially win them over to your cause. Of course, you have to be flexible with this form of recruitment. 

Treat Your Employees Well 

So far we’ve discussed various ways you can find the right people to fill new or existing positions. Recruiting is just one part of the gig — you also need to think about candidate retention. Long-term candidate retention requires a complex and thorough strategy being in place. 

You have to offer competitive compensation if you’re looking to keep proven, quality personnel on your team. Offer perks and incentives tactically, recognize those who are looking to establish themselves as experts in their fields and cultivate their growth, give ambitious employees a challenge. Most importantly, enable every employee a path of growth. 

Show them that the organization they work for is loyal to them just as much as they are loyal to it. After all, loyalty and respect are both a two-way street.

Recognize a Rough Gem

A good HR team shouldn’t only focus on finding top-tier candidates for whatever position they’re looking to fill. They should also look for candidates that potentially lack the experience, but are showing all the signs of becoming the expert in their field. Such candidates are worth their weight in gold. 

If you can find a few rough gems, recognize their potential, and bring them on board, you can seriously benefit your company in the long term.

Start With a Detailed Plan 

Every recruiting campaign has to follow a plan. You need to get your team together and work with them to outline a recruitment strategy that covers all of the basics, but also all of the recruitment factors that are important for your particular niche. Without a solid and complex plan in place, there’s a good chance you’ll find yourself spinning wheels and having trouble meeting your recruitment goals whatever they may be. 

Choosing the right people for your workplace is one of the many foundations of a successful company. If done right, you’ll be helping your team perform at a higher level and produce amazing results. By following the tips stated above, you can do just that.